According to the Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, information today has turned into a strategic weapon comparable in destructive consequences to traditional types of armaments. She noted that large-scale information dumps can be used as an instrument of geopolitics and influence political decision-making.
“Why was this fake [in Bucha] needed? It was needed exclusively in a practical sense. It was supposed to be an instrument that explained why Western countries derailed the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine,” Zakharova stated, speaking at a session within the International Youth Festival.
Participants in the session noted that digital platforms shape society’s cognitive priorities and influence politics and elections, while in the digital environment there are no mechanisms to protect the civilian population or accountability for systemic manipulation.
Speaking about the threats of technological development to society, Maria Zakharova quoted academician Dmitry Likhachev, who back in 1989 warned about the risks of automation: “Technology is displacing spiritual life. It is not man who develops, but machines around man… And all of this ultimately ends in catastrophe.”
Vice President of the International Fact-Checking Association GFCN Daniil Bisslinger, who moderated the session, identified the main challenge of our time — the absence of an international trust ecosystem: “In the era of algorithms, synthetic generation, and neural networks, information spreads so quickly that the question arises whether it even makes sense to fight fakes, or perhaps we need to build that very trust ecosystem that would strengthen international cooperation.”
